BGP: Week Four

This week had a slow start much because of my absence on Monday but also because of a uncertainty whether we would stick with the theme of the game or if we would be better of starting over. In my opinion I don't think this would do us or the game any good, though I do agree that what we have is broken it is far to late to scrap something this big. A large mistake that have been made in the early development was to after the game itself was designed throw a theme and story on top trying to mold it to fit. This resulted in a badly matched relationship between the aesthetic and mechanics. To start over just to try the same thing again when the method behind it comes with unnecessary risks it is to likely that we will end up with a equally mismatching theme.

After we've decided to stick with what we had I could continue to focus on the illustrations for the cards. We now had a quick sketch for each card and with the risk of any major changes to the cards that we had agreed on being small Jessica and I split the all the cards into two piles. Since we most likely will have a difference in style and I though it would be a good idea if we kept each subgroup within the cards consistent in style which would make it easier to identify each of these groups when playing.

I have so far not finished an illustration fully something I would have preferred to have. It been slow and I am to self critical. I need to loosen up my expectations and start being more realistic. With over ten card illustrations on my plate it is important that they have a consistency in rendering so that one doesn't end up being a sketch while another is a fully rendered piece.

BGP: Week Three

This week we finally had enough groundwork done for us to start planing the illustration for each card. The goal that I had for this week was to take all the card descriptions and turn them into a simple sketch. With over 20 cards that was a big challenge. There were still a bit of cleaning up in the documents an to better define curtain things. This of course slowed down the process but nothing dramatic, though it was a bit frustrating to not have a clear view over all the cards and their relation to each other.

I feel like I have done my part when it comes to fixing the game itself, when my suggestions weren't considered anymore and the flaws of the game was neglected I focused my energy on the illustrations and the general visual appearance of the game. This part feels promising considering...

Big Game Project

This blog is a part of the Big Game Project, a course available at Uppsala University - Campus Gotland. The course is ten weeks long and ties in with the GGC (Gotland Game Conference) which is sometime in June. The course could be seen as a examination for all that we are "supposed" to have learned. During these ten weeks each group are going to produce a game from a pre-designed concept. These concepts are created by individual students, before the course begins? Which was weird.

This week have been more than chaotic. Right of the bat I noticed the sheer lack of insight that the creator of this concept had in the project. It was broken in so many places that it was hard to keep track of them all. Much of that was because of the complete nonexistence of any paperwork created for this project. Nothing was defined on paper.

My main efforts this week have been on trying to fix as much as possible before going into full production. This is almost impossible when you have a project leader who is completely blind to the things that are broken and what parts are missing. The game itself was functional but far from fun and dynamic in its game-play. On top of this we had a back story that didn't match the mechanics of the game. It felt like the story was something over-coated after the game mechanics were designed.

Eventually I felt like nothing that I was saying got stuck and mistakes were repeated. At this point I let the design part go as it was functional in the sense that the players comes to their designated goal. This unfortunately only highlighted another issue, that nothing was clearly defined and large parts of the game were missing from the documents. With this and the fact that the cards were being heavily tested the risk for larger changes were still in play and that prevented me from doing any real graphical work. I did however with one of my colleagues start of to define the games visual aspects. This went fairly smooth, though it is hard to work in a group that don't have any real opinions about varying subjects, except for our project leader but those opinions are considered with great care. I am right now at a position where the risk that any work I do might be wasted. Though I guess that is better than rolling my thumb waiting for better days.